The present invention pertains generally to collaboration environments, and more particularly to a method and system for maintaining persistence of graphical markups in a collaborative graphics environment that associates graphical markups to camera positions.
Computer Aided Design (CAD) systems make it possible to create 3-dimensional models of parts and assemblies. At the same time, synchronous collaboration systems such as CoCreate, Inc.""s OneSpace, now allow remotely located users to communicate via a synchronously coupled view of one or more 3D objects. Collaboration environments are very useful in assisting communication between remotely located product designers, and between suppliers and manufacturers.
The use of graphical markup tools, which provide functionality for drawing shapes and adding text on the screen without modifying the 3-D model, enhances the communication ability of collaboration session members. As an example, suppose a first company manufactures automobiles that require a certain screw assembly which are supplied by a second company that specializes in manufacturing the screw assemblies. Engineers from the first and second companies can enter a collaborative graphical viewing environment to allow them to simultaneously view 3D models of the screw assembly. In the collaborative environment, because the views of each session member are coupled, one engineer can point a cursor at a point on the 3D screw assembly object shown on the screen, and the other engineers will see where that cursor is being pointed to. Collaborative markup tools allow better communication through a variety of shapes such as circle, arrows, and textual markups. For example, if it is desired to communicate to the screw assembly manufacturer to verify the length dimension of a pin in the screw assembly as displayed on the screen, a rectangle shape can be drawn around the pin on the screen and a text note attached requesting xe2x80x9cCheck pin lengthxe2x80x9d. In the synchronous collaboration environment, the newly added markup will appear on the screens of every participating collaboration session member.
Often, it is desirable to save the results of a collaboration session to reload later. For example, it may happen that, due to the time constraints of participating members, a synchronous collaboration session must end before completion of the collaborative effort. In this case, it would be desirable to be able to save the current state of the collaboration session and to be able to reload it later in order to continue the collaborative effort. As another example, all desired parties may not be available during the time the synchronous collaboration session is conducted. It would therefore be desirable in this case to save the results from the collaboration session, including named camera position views and graphical markups associated with those camera positions, for later viewing by members who were absent.
The present invention is a method and system for maintaining persistence of graphical markups created within a collaboration environment that allows users to save and reload camera position views and their associated markups. The graphical markup persistence capability of the invention is implemented in a collaborative graphical viewing system that associates graphical markups to named camera positions. In this type of collaborative graphical viewing system, the view seen on the screen is that seen by the camera; in other words, the rotation can be thought of as if the camera were moving rather than the object viewed by the camera. In this system, markups associated with a given camera position appear only when the view is rotated to the view corresponding to that camera position and disappear when the view is rotated to another camera position.
In accordance with the method of the invention, as the collaboration session member(s) begin to create graphical markups, a markup module associates the markups with the camera position at which the markups are made. The collaboration tool provides utilities to allow saving the graphical markups to the user""s local disk, saving the graphical markups into a PDM system (either locally or remotely), and saving the entire collaboration session including graphical markups, notes, action items, etc. When saved to persistent storage, the camera position and all graphical markups associated with that camera position are stored in the markup file. The saved markups/session can later be reloaded from the user""s local disk or the PDM system as appropriate. When a saved session is loaded into the collaboration session, all of the camera positions and associated graphical markups from the saved session are then accessible, allowing simple viewing of the results of the session, continuation-of-work, or asynchronous collaboration.